By Alicia Greenleigh
The Salt Lake Tribune
What do you know about Ethiopia? If you’re like most people, it’s probably not much. But the Mesgana Dance Group wants to change that. Mesgana, which means gratitude in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia, is made up of 11 girls, ages 7 to 13, who are educating people across America about their culture through song and dance. The group will give three performances in northern Utah this week.
“Most kids [in Ethiopia] know traditional songs and dances because their parents taught them. It’s something they do throughout generations,” said Murray resident Norm Perdue, founder of the Utah-based Children of Ethiopia Education Fund.
COEEF, a non-profit organization, was started in 2001 by Perdue and his wife Ruthann after they traveled to Addis Ababa, the country’s capital, with some family friends. It was then that the Perdues sponsored their first child, Kidist Bunde, when they heard her grandmother could no longer afford to send her to school. Since then, COEEF has paid tuition for more than 800 girls to attend private schools.
“We decided to only sponsor girls because they don’t have the same opportunities as boys to go to school,” Perdue said. “Most of the time, if a family has a boy, he becomes the priority because they think he’ll become the breadwinner. And so, girls usually have to drop out in elementary [school].”
Ruthann, a registered nurse, both recently retired to work full time for COEEF. The couple travel to Ethiopia every three or four months. And though the program has become successful in providing girls with a means to an education, the Perdues formed the Mesgana Dance Group two years ago in the hope that it would expand and grow their efforts.
“We held tryouts [for girls in the program], choose 11 and then they started to train for eight hours a week since December, learning dances from different regions of Ethiopia,” Norm Perdue said.
Last year, the Perdues took a small group of girls in the troupe on an American tour during their summer vacation. This summer, an expanded group will visit 17 cities. The troupe arrived in Utah on Tuesday and spent the next day sightseeing, swimming and enjoying a barbecue at a donor’s house in Riverton.
Meskerem Tadesse, 15, is one of the program’s success stories. She consistently places among the top three in her classes, speaks five languages fluently, and recently received a full scholarship to Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant.
“At first I couldn’t believe I could go to school and not have to work,” Meskerem said. “Back home I woke up at 4 a.m. to finish my homework, and then I cleaned the house, cooked breakfast, got my [younger] cousins ready and then went to school.” Meskerem’s favorite subject is biology and she hopes to become a doctor.
Another dancer, Bethlehem Efirem, 11, has been in the program for two years and wants to become a flight attendant.
“I like Keffa [a dance style] best,” said Bethelhem, who visited California during the troupe’s tour last year. “I love Disneyland. Mickey is my favorite and Splash Mountain.”
While the girls obviously love touring, the Perdues stress that the dancing and the tour is secondary to COEEF’s main goal of educating girls.
“Education is the outlet for a better life for these girls,” Norm Perdue said. “So our main focus is and always will be the girls’ education.”
The Mesgana Dance Group will perform Wednesday at 7 p.m. the Murray Park Amphitheater, 296 E. Murray Park Lane, Salt Lake City; Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Capitol Theater, 50 W. 200 South, Salt Lake City; and Sept. 4 at 7 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre, 328 Main Street, Park City. Tickets range from $10 to $20. For details, visit www.mesgana.com. Sponsoring one year of schooling for one girl is $200; sponsorships that include medical care and personal assistance for the children’s families are also available. For more information, visit www.coeef.org.